When trying to add extra licenses Veeam tells me I need to buy them in group of 10, that's nuts

[pawel]

I purchased Veeam backup for O365 in December, over 30 licenses. Recently I noticed I was a couple licenses short, no problem I reach out to my rep and ask for a quote. They tell me Veeam won't let them quote anything less than 10 licenses which will put me way over my limit and way over my budget.

MIcrosoft Office 365 is a per user product. I don't ever add 10 users to my tenant, I add one or two at a time as I need them. Why does Veeam have this absurd limitation that requires me to buy way more licenses than I need and why can't I buy a couple as I need them? Can this policy be explained?

[Polina]

Hi pawel,

To address such challenges as you are facing now, we provide grace count of 10 user accounts or 10% of the license count (whichever is greater). They are granted if your subscription license has exceeded its limit by up to 10 user accounts or up to 10% of the license count (please see more details here).

You can also reuse the licenses if there're any user accounts which you don't need to back up anymore. Such licenses will be revoked in 31 days and you can then assign them to the new accounts (check the FAQ on licensing).

Hope this will help you to keep your data protected despite the budget constraints

[pawel]

Thanks for the reply.

The documentation is a bit confusing, it says:

Code: Select all

The grace period in this case equals 1 months. After this period, processing of excessive user accounts (in FIFO queue) will be stopped; no more extra accounts will be queued for processing. The corresponding messages will be displayed in the UI and written to the log.

Does that mean that if I exceed these licenses by a couple users they will only be backed up for a month?

[Polina]

Hi pawel,

License Exceeded

Additional process of no more than 10 user accounts or 10% of the license count (whichever is greater) granted if your subscription license has exceeded its limit by up to 10 user accounts or up to 10% of the license count.

These extra licenses are provided for 2 months.

[pawel]

So what good does two months do me? I would still need to buy 10 licenses if I only need one.

[Polina]

That's correct; if you still need additional licenses after the 2 months period, you will need to purchase a minimum of 10 licenses. The reason behind this policy is simple - it's not cost-effective to sell licenses under 10 users, which is also why we provide up to 10 licenses for free with Community Edition.

[jsprinkleisg]

It seems the 2 months limit applies only to the Rental License type, which is used by service providers. There's no such time limit in the normal subscription license. So as long as you don't exceed the additional 10 accounts or 10%, you can wait until you renew your subscription and true up at that time.

Here's the exact text from the Subscription License page in the user guide, emphasis added:

License Exceeded

Additional process of no more than 10 user accounts or 10% of the license count (whichever is greater) granted if your subscription license has exceeded its limit by up to 10 user accounts or up to 10% of the license count.

If exceeded by more than 10 user accounts or more than 10% of the license count (whichever is greater), you can process these 10 (or 10%) extra user accounts according to the FIFO queue logic (that is, "first in - first out"); no more additional accounts are allowed.

The grace period in this case is not limited and lasts during the whole term of the subscription.

[Polina]

Good catch and that's correct. The terms have changed since the time of my previous response.